Living in a Flip Flop World

Chapter 1

Adopted

I was born December 4, 1967 in Anadarko, Oklahoma. I was born one of five children to parents who could not take care of us. I was not a planned pregnancy. While my birth Mom was pregnant with me, my birth Dad would kick and punch her in the stomach hoping that she would miscarry me.

They later divorced, and my real Dad got remarried and had children with his new wife. He did not want anything to do with us kids. While my Mom was married to my Dad, he used to beat the daylights out of her and threw her out of a moving car.

I was born an alcohol-drug baby. Mom would go bar-hopping and wrapped me up in newspapers and hid me behind the dumpster so she could go for beer.

There were three of us girls and two boys. They had four other children they could not care for, so they placed each one with different family members. I was the only one adopted out at ten months. When DHS found me, I was sitting in a corner drinking clabbered milk with just a cloth diaper on. I had bruises and splinters all over my body. My Mom had polio and smoked a lot. I don't think she really knew how to take care of her children.

I was finally adopted by a nice Christian couple when I was ten months old. When they came and picked me up, they waited in the waiting room. A man, who carried me with just one hand, walked down the hall and said, “Here's your baby.” My Mom was so overjoyed. When they got ready to leave for home, a lady told them it would be in our best interests to change my name so my birth Mom could not come back and re-claim me.

Mom and Dad already had two biological children and fostered other kids. Mom wanted more kids. Dad did not really want any more, but Mom had the last word. On the way home, I kept saying, “Mama.” When they got home with me, I had bad dreams and cried at nighttime.

They also adopted a three-month old girl before me. As we got older, she would dress us up in the same clothes, same haircut, same perm, same curls and dress us up in lacy, frilly dresses with bows in our hair. I remember when we got bad perms that were too curly; we used to wash our hair over and over to straighten it out. We went and had our pictures taken a lot. I am the youngest of four kids, three girls and one boy.